Building a future-proof CMS where AI optimization and editorial craftsmanship meet.

Details

El Confidencial is somewhat unique among digital media companies in that it designs, builds, and maintaints its own custom CMS used daily by journalists, columnists, and freelancers. After 15 years on a legacy in-house system, the product, engineering, and design teams undertook a full modernization of the CMS to improve writing efficiency, integrate new AI tools to automate repetitive tasks, and address serious technical and usability limitations.

Category: UX Research, Product Design

Client: El Confidencial

My Role: Design Lead

Year: 2023 - present

Services Provided: User Research, Product Design, Design System Creation

Context

The previous CMS was a 15-year-old legacy platform built in-house. Over time it became slow, buggy, insecure, and visually outdated. Writers frequently avoided drafting inside the CMS altogether, preferring external text editors and pasting content back in later — creating a fragmented, inefficient workflow.

The legacy CMS had a cluttered, outdated interface, with serious usability and performance problems.

Key problems

• Outdated, cluttered UX with high cognitive load
• Slow, unreliable behavior full of technical bugs
• Security vulnerabilities
• No foundation for new features (especially AI tooling)
• Inefficient workflow: writers drafted externally, then copied content into the CMS